COE Faculty Awards for 2013

By Departmental Staff

Dean Enrique J. Lavernia’s Announcement 
2013 College of Engineering Deans Annual Faculty Awards 

Professor Stephen Lewis of the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, won the Outstanding Faculty Teaching Award for 2013. ProfessorLewis’ research interests include analog integrated circuits, data conversion, filters and signal processing; current circuit design projects focus on reducing cost while increasing the portability of data-conversion and signal-processing systems. In 2001, he joined the editorial team behind Analysis and Design of Analog Integrated Circuits, a popular textbook drawn from material taught to high-level seniors and graduate students in the UC Davis and UC Berkeley engineering departments. Professor Lewis also contributed to the book’s fifth edition, published in 2009. He won a 2008 Lockheed Martin Teaching Excellent Award, and in 2009 he was one of the UC Davis professors honored with an ASUCD Academic Affairs Commission Excellence in Education Award. In 2010, he was named the IEEE Outstanding Instructor of the Year. 

The Outstanding Senior Faculty Award for 2013 is presented to Distinguished Professor R. Paul Singh, in the Department of Biological and Agricultural Engineering. Professor Singh’s immense value in the field of food processing has seen him consult with numerous domestic and international agencies, including UNESCO, the World Bank, the World Health Organization, the U.S. Department of Energy, and the Food and Agriculture Organization. In 2004, NASA assigned him a project the development of a “multipurpose fruit andvegetable processing system for advanced life support” intended to anticipate an expedition to Mars. (The project continues to this day.) In July 2013, he received the Massey-Ferguson Educational Gold Medal, one of the American Society of Agricultural and Biological Engineers’ highest awards, to acknowledge his dedication to “the spirit of learning and teaching in the field of agricultural engineering, for the advancement of agricultural knowledge and practice, and for his inspiration to others.” 

Professor Anna Scaglione, of the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, earned the Outstanding Mid-Career Faculty Research Award. Professor Scaglione’s work focuses on communication networks and information systems, with an emphasis on wireless networks and sensor networks. She hopes to help us utilize power more efficiently and sustainably, via the increased use of “smart grids.” She recently received the 2013 IEEE Donald G. Fink Award, which pays tribute to “researchers, inventors, innovators and practitioners whose exceptional achievements and outstanding contributions have made a lasting impact on technology, society and the engineering profession.” She shares this honor with colleagues Stefano Galli and Zhifang Wang, for their paper For the Grid and Through the Grid: The Role of Power Communications in the Smart Grid. 

Finally, the Outstanding Junior Faculty Award goes to Professor William Ristenpart, in the Department of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science. Professor Ristenpart holds the Joe and Essie Smith Endowed Chair of Chemical Engineering, and his research team investigates the physical, chemical and biological phenomena of fluids. In the spring of 2011, he won a five-year $420,000 National Science Foundation CAREER Award, to support his work on the electrical charges of fluid droplets. During spring quarter 2013, he and UCDavis colleague Tonya Kuhl earned considerable publicity and departmental acclaim for their ground-breaking freshman seminar course ECM 1, “The Design of Coffee” which demonstrated that the quantitative and analytical tools used to analyze coffee, could be applied to more importantsubjects such as blood cells, influenza transmission or electrostatic dehydrators. The goal: to encourage more lower-division students to embracechemical engineering as a field of study. 

Please plan to attend the formal awards ceremony, taking place from 4 to 6 p.m. Thursday, November 21, in Kemper Hall’s Bruce & Marie West Lobby. I know you’ll want to join me in congratulating our College of Engineering colleagues.

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